Here to support the new Sheriff in town, @Undisciplined
I’m an avid fan of Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics. Hence, it was a no-brainer that I would pick up Think like a freak, especially when I flipped through the pages and saw the large font size. Should be an easy book to integrate into my busy life.
And it was. I finished all 9 chapters within 2 days. As is customary of Steven D. Levitt’s and Stephen J. Dubner’s writing, you can expect your mind to travel intriguing places as you are faced with obscure case studies and seemingly quirky conclusions. I was suitably engaged and entertained. But what I didn’t expect is that they detail how to think better in their chapters. I started taking notes on my Obsidian so that I might hone my critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Here, I share with you the bite-sized nuggets of insights that they expound on in their book. I also include my responses (highlighted in bold) aimed at jogging your thinking.
- When it comes to solving problems, one good way to start is to put away your moral compass. When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue, it’s easy to lose track of what the issue actually is.
A useful principle to follow in teaching. Very often, teachers get themselves tangled up in philosophical discussions of how children should behave and how behavioural norms are disappearing like quicksand. However, when I engulf myself in such thinking, I lack the focus to meet the children where they are, regardless of whether I am happy with their progress. Stoic acceptance is the first step.
- You may have to purposefully go out and create feedback through an experiment. With a good experiment, in one simple cut, you can eliminate all the complexity that makes it so hard to determine cause and effect.
Action research projects are an integral part of a teacher’s life in Singapore. So, I guess my education system has its heart in the right place.
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Admit that you don’t know. The impulse to investigate can only be set free if you stop pretending to know answers that you don’t.
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Ask the question differently. Redefine the problem. E.g. ‘how do I make hot dogs easier to eat?’ instead of ‘how do I eat more hot dogs?’ By seeing things from a literally new angle, you can sometimes gain an edge in solving a problem.
**I was pondering how I could redefine a problem because when I’m immersed in its chaos whirlpool, I lack the energy to zoom out and perceive it from a different angle. Then, I had a brainwave - why don’t I state my problem on ChatGPT and ask it to define it differently for me? Use A.I. as my secretary to get things done.
- Ask small questions, not big ones
Smaller problems are easier to tackle and when addressed satisfactorily, may create a ripple effect that obliterates other related problems.
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Don’t be afraid to appear unsophisticated by asking a simple question or making an observation that is hidden in plain sight.
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People respond to incentives: financial, moral, social n herd mentality
Obviously, I am not going to pay my students for doing their homework. But how can I create classroom norms such that my less motivated students feel the sting of being left out if they don’t do their homework? I need to think this through.
- Success of an incentive: novelty, candor, control, change the frame of the relationship
Trying to make myself less of an authority figure and more of a trusted companion with my students. But I gotta admit, it takes a hella lot energy to state the rationale and achieve buy-in from teenagers who have already made up their minds. I wonder if my patience will last haha.
- Nudge a relationship from one framework into another. Hopefully an adversarial framework is switched to a collaborative framework.
I read with rapt interest how ping pong teams were used as a diplomacy tool to end the stalemate between the United States (President Richard Nixon) and China (Chairman Mao) in the 1970s. Not forgetting how Singapore once held a successful summit meeting attended by President Trump and Kim Jong Un in 2018. It is possible for an entrenched us-vs-them mentality to be eroded, even if such instances are the exception rather than the norm.
- Figure out what people really care about, not what they say they care about.
Luckily, my children are often explicit in their demands even if they drive me up the wall. I should be grateful for this period where I don’t have to read their minds.
- Create a separating equilibrium to weed the innocent from the guilty
This is used to great effect by some founders here. Some territories have posting fees of sats that are at least 400, speedily destroying assmilkers. Now, I have the econs term to name the behaviour - separating equilibrium.
- Rather than try to persuade people of the worthiness of a goal, it’s more productive to essentially trick people with subtle cues or new default settings.
How do I nudge my children to have their dinners automatically?
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Tell stories that fill out the picture, use data to portray a sense of magnitude, include the passage of time to show the degree of constancy or change, and lay out a daisy chain of events so that we can ascertain the cause and effect.
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When the opportunity cost seems to outweigh the sunk cost, it’s not cowardly to quit.
We should normalise failure and believe that quitting isn’t taboo. Here, we can learn from the Finns. Did you know that the Finns celebrate Oct 13 as their National Day of Failure? It started in 2010 by some university students because they wanted to encourage more start-ups, given that the typical Finn abhors failure and won’t be inclined towards entrepreneurship.
I hope you enjoyed my notes and reactions. 😆
P.S: 108 refers to the 108 heroes in a famous ancient Chinese novel titled Water Margin. That’s why we’re paying 108 sats for the honour of posting econs stuff here, heh 😏